Response of patent medicine vendors in rural areas of Lagos state Nigeria to antimalarial policy change

Background: Patent medicine vendors (PMVs) play an important role in the treatment of malaria, especially in the rural areas. Nigeria recently changed her antimalarial treatment policy from chloroquine to artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT).Objectives: To determine the response of PMVs to the new policy.Methods: A baseline study was conducted in two local government areas (LGAs) of Lagos state Nigeria as the first phase in an intervention study aimed at improving the malarial treatment practices of PMVs in rural Lagos. A mixed method design involving a questionnaire survey of 180 PMVs and four key informant interviews were used. An antimalarial drug (AMD) audit was also performed.Results: More than 80% of respondents were aware of the policy change in malaria treatment, but only 23.9% sold an ACT for the last case of malaria treated in an under five child. The main determining factor of the particular AMD sold was PMV’s personal choice (70.6%). About half (58.9%) of the shops stocked ACTs, the newly recommended antimalarials.Conclusions: The high awareness of the policy change did not translate to a commensurate increase in the sale of the new drugs. Factors beyond the PMVs need to be addressed for a successful adoption of the new policy.Key words: Patent Medicine Vendors, ACTs, policy change, malaria, artemisinin monotherapies, non-artemisinin therapie

Abundances of Nitrates and Coliform with Regards to Water Quality. In Some Parts of lbadan, Southwest, Nigeria.

Water pollution has been reported throughout the world and Nigeria is not an exception. A very wide range of pollutants have been recognized, including Nitrogen species and bacteria. Nitrate (NO.) is the main form of Nitrogen which occurs in water and is becoming increasingly widespread because of agriculture activities, the disposal of sewage and wastes. This study thus focused on the assessment of the water samples in Ibadan, .Southwest, Nigeria based on these two pollutants (NO,) and. Colform) and possibility of natural denitrification in the study area. The surface and groundwater in Ibadan h:w e been polluted by municipal, industrial wastewater, agricultural activities among others. 1 he nitrate and coliform concentrations at thirty sampling points with in Tbadan ranged from 5.89 to 250mg/l and 74-IOOOcfu/ lOOmg/1 respectively. The concentration of nitrate and califom1 exceeded the WHO limit of I Omg/1 and Ocfu/ lOOmg!r'in 93% and 1OQ% of the sampled locations respectively. High nitrate and califom1 ·levels were observed in water from wells from the undeveloped part of the smdv area. The decrease in nitrate concentration viz a viz an increase in both HCO,- and pH along the groundwater flow direction confirmed the possibility of nitrate removal or natural denitrification in the study area

Investigation of the anti-inflammatory and antinociceptive activities of Hymenocardia acida Tul. (Hymenocardiaceae)

Hymenocardia acida Tul. (Hymenocardiaceae) locally called Orupa, is traditionally used for the treatment of inflammation, including arthritis, rheumatic pain and toothache. The potential antiinflammatory and antinociceptive activities of the aqueous leaf extract of this plant were evaluated in animal models. The extract (50, 100 and 200 mg/kg) significantly (P < 0.05) and dose - dependently inhibited carrageenan and egg albumin-induced rat paw oedema development compared with control group. At 3 h of post-carrageenan administration, the highest dose of the extract (200 mg/kg, p.o) inhibited oedema formation by 66.67%. The reference drug used, indomethacin (10 mg/kg, p.o), gave an inhibition of 72.22%. The inhibitory activity shown by the aqueous leaf extract of H. acida over a period of 6 h in the carrageenan and 3 h in the egg albumin-induced paw inflammation models was comparable to that exhibited by the reference drugs used, indomethacin and cyproheptadine (10 mg/kg, p.o). The extract elicited a significant analgesic activity in the tail immersion test as evidenced by the increase in latency time in seconds as compared with the control at the end of 20 min. In the acetic acid-induced writhing model, the extract showed a dose-dependent reduction in the number of writhes at 50, 100 and 200 mg/kg when compared to the control group. The 200 mg/kg dose produced a complete protective effect, as no abdominal constriction was observed. The results obtained in this study provide some justification for the folkloric uses of H. acida as a remedy for relieving pain and  inflammation.Key words: Anti-inflammatory activity, antinociceptive activity, carrageenan, egg-albumin, Hymenocardia acida

WORK ROLE SALIENCE, SELF ESTEEM AND PERCEIVED SELFEFFICACY AS PREDICTORS OF CAREER MATURITY AMONG SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS

Background: This study is focused secondary school students because this stage of education is a critical period for the development of career maturity. Some studies have contended that career maturity is largely determined by gender and socioeconomic status, while not disputing this, this study is set out to examine the impact of work role salience, self-esteem, and self-efficacy on career maturity of students. Methods: Two hundred and fifty seven (257) senior secondary school students with age ranging from15 to 19 years (mean age = 17 years) were selected from four public and private Secondary Schools in metropolitan city through stratified and systematic sampling techniques. The study being a survey research, made use of a questionnaire consisting of three validated subscales. Results: Multivariate and bivariate analysis were employed to analyse the data and the results indicate that work role salience, self-esteem, and self-efficacy jointly predicted (F3, 256 = 26.315, p<0.05) career maturity of students. Multiple regression analysis shows that there was a significant contribution of work role salience (β = .445; t = 8.496; p<0.05) and self-esteem, (β = .197; t = 2.109; p<0.05) to the career maturity of students. However, self-efficacy (β = .048; t = 0.859; p>0.05) did not contribute significantly in predicting the career maturity of students. Conclusion: The findings of the study show the need for policy makers and educationists to further institutionalize counselling and guidance services in secondary schools. Students personnel support should therefore create awareness and organize seminars for the students on career issues as this may improve students’ career self-efficacy

An architectural-based approach to detecting spim in electronic means of communication

Spams are what users and developers should be aware of in all Internet-based communication tools (such as e-mail, websites, Social Networking Sites (SNS), instant messengers and so on). This is because spammers have not ceased from using these platforms to deceive and lure users into releasing vibrant and sensitive information (especially, financial details). This paper developed an architectural based technique for SPIM (Instant Message Spam or IM SPAM) detection using the classification method. The classification was done using the C4.5 classifier with a dataset of messages gotten from an instant messaging environment. The dataset served as the input to the classification algorithm method which was able to distinguish spam from non-spam messages. This classification method was depicted in a tree form to show its usefulness. The results show that its precision, recall and accuracy rate satisfied standard recommendation with a commendable error rate. The proposed technique will find implication in the reduction of the number of Internet users.Keywords: Social Networking sites, spammers, Instant message spam, C4.5 Classifiers, e-mails

Physicochemical assessment and bacteriological studies of hand-dug wells of major markets in south western, Nigeria

Rapid population in developing nations has imposed stress on groundwater resources, thus the need to assess physicochemical and bacteriological impact of microbes on hand-dug wells along some major markets in Ibadan Southwestern Nigeria. Water samples from hand-dug wells were measured sequentially, and total dissolved solute (TDS), pH, electrical conductivity (EC), salinity, and temperature were measured in situ. Water samples were analyzed at a Microbiology Laboratory. Most probable techniques used for micro-organism analysis were in three stages: presumptive test used for confirmation of Escherichia coli, confirmed test for total viable bacteria count (TVBC), and complete test to reconfirm the presence of coliform. Presumptive test showed high rate of E. coli in most of the hand-dug wells with (37.5 %). Confirmed test revealed Staphylococcus aureus to be 25 %, followed by Proteus vulgaris (14.6 %), Bacillus species (12.5 %), Pseudomonas aeruginosa (8.3 %), and Klebsiella spp. (2.1 %) respectively. Total viable bacteria counts are 500 to 192,000. Physicochemical results (total dissolved solute (TDS), pH, electrical conductivity (EC), salinity, temperature) when compared with WHO (2006) and SON (2007) revealed all the parameters to be within the permissible limits except pH (5.8 to 9.56), and high values of the parameters were caused by organic matter. High E. coli in the study area revealed influence of human and animal fecal that coul